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Science Technology

India Planning Reusable 2-Stage-to-Orbit Vehicle 167

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the the-next-space-race dept.
WoodenKnight writes "India's ISRO Chairman, G Madhavan Nair recently gave a brief description of a fully-reusable 2-stage satellite launch vehicle that is being planned at ISRO. From the article: 'This is in its initial stages of vehicle configuration and the first stage is configured as a winged body configuration, which will attain an altitude of around 100 km and deliver nearly half the orbital velocity. This stage after burnout will re-enter and will be made to land horizontally on the runway, like an aircraft. The second stage after delivering the payload in the orbit will be made to re-enter the atmosphere and will be recovered using airbags either in the sea or land. This is only in its conceptual stage.'"
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India Planning Reusable 2-Stage-to-Orbit Vehicle More

India Planning Reusable 2-Stage-to-Orbit Vehicle

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  • Wow.

    Doesn't this sound like a Space Shuttle?
    • No it's the reverse of a space shuttle.

      The part of it that launches the space craft flies back to earth, while the space craft comes back like it would a regular rocket via chutes.

      Think of it as a rocket that piggy backs a jet airliner and launching from 100km up.
    • 2-stage makes it sound like the craft from The Rocket Company [hobbyspace.com]. But the wings break that mold. And, if you ask me, are probably a bad idea! Why? Read The Rocket Company. (Just about the best near-term Sci-Fi book about building reusable rockets, but with *tons* of meaty science & engineering factual tidbits!)

    • Re:Space Shuttle, Again (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Catbeller ( 118204 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @11:35PM (#14487858) Homepage
      Actually, it the Space Shuttle as it was originally designed. I remember: two stages, the first to bring the joined craft up to high altitude, then release stage two and airbreathe back to earth on a runway. The second stage was supposed to fire up to orbit, then come back down as an airbreather and land on a runway.

      The whole concept had to be scrapped because Congress wanted to kill the whole program after Apollo. To survive, NASA shopped the Shuttle to the Air Force. The Air Force had no use for the two-stage, small payload shuttle which was designed for mostly passengers, not freight.

      The Air Force wanted something to lift the Keyhole spy satellites, which were pretty damned big -- the Hubble Space Telescope is essentially a Keyhole, just pointing away instead of at the license plates of evil Russians -- so NASA redesigned the Shuttle into a heavy lifter by getting rid of the flyback first stage, adding a disposable external fuel tank, and tacking on two solid rocket boosters to get the whole mess into orbit.

      The Air Force signed on to add their weight to lobby for the new system, and lo! the idiot Shuttle, good for nothing but lifting Keyhole telescopes into orbit. NASA engineers probably cried themselves to sleep for years.

      The Air Force later stopped using the Shuttle for spysats, leaving NASA with the flying boxcar that no one wanted to use.

      Most of the above is from the book Enterprise, by Jerry Grey.

      And remember this: it was the solid rocket boosters, and later the external tank, that destroyed two shuttles. Air Force: our thanks...

      We never got an actual cheap shuttle, because Congress (the american people) didn't care about it, and the Air Force barely got a bastardized version built. They've been underfunded and unused by an American public who doesn't understand about what could have been done -- read The High Frontier by Gerard K. O'Neill to get an idea of what we've lost -- and the funds to build a successor went into an insanely expensive scramjet program in the nineties that merely made aerospace companies richer by a few billion bucks. There have been shoestring programs, like the Delta Clipper DC-X single-stage to orbit prototype that never was developed, as well as rotor-landing concepts that never got past the testing stage, because Congress (that's us, in toto) constantly whittles NASA down to a state where only ONE development program can proceed at one time. It's a fake zero-sum game, where decades go by while NASA is chastised for it's "waste" while the military and new off-shoots like Halliburton drain trillions withut stay or let. NASA would love to have multiple programs testing different systems, like railguns supplanting the first stage, or winged dual stages like India's concept, or Pournelle's Delta Clipper one-stage vertical launch and land, or laser assisted takeoffs, or an advanced spaceplane, or just dirty old Saturn V's to get jobs done... but the US does not have a citizenry that has the education, the imagination, or the spirit necessary to fund even one program thru final operations, let alone multiple concepts.

      The US is just not the country to do this. We did Apollo because we hated the Russkies so much that price was no object. After Apollo reached 17 (there were supposed to be 20, then the Selene permanent lab on the moon along with the Zeus Mars missions -- atomic powered, that one) there simply was no political pressure to keep going. Even today, NASA tries to get one-off Mars manned landers because they think that that is all the public will buy -- and they're right. Americans won't finance space colonization or L5/L2/L4 space industry. They don't even know what an ORBIT is, much less what all the rest means. And "sci-fi" in movies and TV sure as hell didn't help. Without the science, it's just WW II in space. Space has advantages for industry and solar energy transmission to ground, but you have to have a special kind of education and imagination to understand what the ideas mean -- and we don't have it
  • Sounds a good deal like Spaceship One [wikipedia.org].

    Maybe its better than firing rockets straight up.

    • Re:Hrm... (Score:4, Informative)

      by dabigpaybackski ( 772131 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @06:56PM (#14486255) Homepage
      A nice idea, but they ought to use a ramp. Sooner or later, the economics will compel some party to do just that.

      Here. Check out this link. [skyramp.org] Imagine the possibilities: long inclined launch ramp = low launch costs = pervasive human presence in space. Nuclear propulsion would be nice, too.

      And I seriously wonder if the Indian aerospace industry is up to the task of building this thing. But if they are, then bully for them.

    • Liek Pegasus (Score:3, Insightful)

      by amightywind ( 691887 )

      Maybe its better than firing rockets straight up.

      Indeed. The Pegasus [orbital.com] launch vehicle has been proving this for years. Being hauled to 40,000 ft by a carrier aircraft and having wings to provide lift in the lower atmosphere atmosphere dramatically shrink the size of the launch vehicle. Only program is the idea doesn't scale very well. Pegasus can only carry about 1000 lbs to LEO. There aren't any jets that can carry a much larger vehicle.

      I am a little suprised at the naivete of the Mr. Nair's comments.

  • So, we'll be offshoring... (Score:4, Funny)

    by IAAP ( 937607 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @06:49PM (#14486190)
    NASA's stuff to India now?

    • Yes. (Score:4, Informative)

      by AoT ( 107216 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @06:53PM (#14486223) Homepage Journal
      In fact we will [atimes.com]
      • FTParent'sFA:The United States has shown keen interest in placing a payload aboard India's first spacecraft to the moon, Chandrayan-I.

        AND why the US supports it: India considers its missile, space and nuclear programs to be closely interlinked, with nuclear deterrence against Pakistan and China and benefits to the people through satellite technology and nuclear energy being critical factors.

        Oh, fuck, does this mean there's another Cold War starting? If so, I agree with my sig.

        • I doubt we will see a cold war in Asia. Pakistan does not have near enough resources to compete with India, and China really is pretty indifferent to India. China is focussing on economic development and economic expansion, politacally speaking; though they are building their military, that is more in response to the US.

          India just has their few nukes for deterence, and they really have pushes for a comprehensive, enforcable ban on nukes. Not that that is likely, but hey, they seem to be doing all of this in

    • Re:So, we'll be offshoring... (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Boy, and I thought losing my job to an Indian worker on this planet was bad!
  • I think they can spend that money a tad more wisely.
    • Everytime there is a post about India, some know-nothing decides to chime in with just such a comment. First off, there will always be a problem somwehere. So, if you insist that progress is only allowed to occur after all old problems are dealt with, nothing will ever be accomplished. Second, what the hell makes you so qualified to comment? You were posting on Slashdot when you could have been helping backwoods Indian villagers! (And, so am I!) You express a concern about it, so I'll assume you do volunteer work, and donate just like I do. But, neither of us dedicates 100% of our time and money to helping others. Nobody does. So, no government does for the exact same reason - governments are made of people!

      Lastly, India uses the space program to do a lot of very real good. Weather satellites save lives. Earth observation satellites can help see how crops are doing, and make it easier to get better yields. They can help find where water is, and help make maps to figure out how to get it where it needs to go.

      Jerk.
      • Have you been to India? I used to believe the same thing- people in poverty in India are responsible for their own demise. I believed that right up until I was there for three weeks this past summer. I was in that place without clean water. Let me tell you something, until you too don't have basic human necessities available to you, like clean water, you have no idea what it feels like. Yes, the whole space thing is great for India and will probably help it overall, but let's not overlook the importance of
        • Thank you Kanye West of Asia. My whole family happens to come from the rural part - shacks, huts, and all. I'll tell you that the stifling oppression of socialism has kept far more people in poverty than has space program spending.

          But hey, since charity begins at home, why not start with yourself, and ask your own president to send more bucks to urban ghettoes where the murder rate is higher than in any 3rd world country, rather than sending poor youth to die over in Baghdad.
          • The real problem is that India is way, way, WAAAAY too overpopulated. All the capitalism is the world won't save a country doubling in size every thirty years. Poverty can't be reined in when the majority of the population is teenaged, underemployed, and competing for ever-tighter resources. Trees? Almost gone. Burned for fuel. Wildlife, doomed. Political unrest? With half a billion teenagers? Guaranteed.

            It's a problem mirrored from Malaysia to Africa to South America. The arguments are always about "social
            • I couldn't resist. [[[The real problem is that India is way, way, WAAAAY too overpopulated. All the capitalism is the world won't save a country doubling in size every thirty years. Poverty can't be reined in when the majority of the population is teenaged, underemployed, and competing for ever-tighter resources. Trees? Almost gone. Burned for fuel. Wildlife, doomed. Political unrest? With half a billion teenagers? Guaranteed]]] Have you ever stopped to consider the fact that the old bastions of "Civiliza

              • Hell, people keep complaining about population, world population even....you could fit the entire world population into Texas, with a population density about the same as that of Manhattan...which isn't exactly an unpleasant place to live last I heard. The Earth isn't exactly overcrowded yet. Some places have a hell of a lot more people than others, but they aren't overcrowded.

                I'd say India's main problems have been matters of economics, and politics...not population. Fact is...India's space program saves

                • The world may not be literally overcrowded, but when cities are built on the best farmland (standard practice in the US, and also, I understand, elsewhere) then, Yes, we ARE overcrowded. When populations sprawl rather than compact, then, Yes, we ARE overcrowded.

                  And when we overfish and overfarm and drive an increasing number of other species to extinction, then Yes, we ARE overcrowded.

                  I'll agree that the overcrowding isn't inherent, but is rather an artifact of the way we structure our societies, but unles

                  • The world may not be literally overcrowded, but when cities are built on the best farmland (standard practice in the US, and also, I understand, elsewhere) then, Yes, we ARE overcrowded. When populations sprawl rather than compact, then, Yes, we ARE overcrowded.

                    Cities may be built on the best farmland...but hardly a vast amount of it. And there's plenty of other "best farmland" around just as good as we put cities on...and we farm it. And, at least here in the US, agricultural technology has been advancin

                    • I feel that you are much too complacent about, e.g., US farming techniques. Data that I've seen (a few decades old now, admittedly) indicate that the irrigation of crops is leading to a build-up of salt underneath the surface of the ground. There are other potential problems, basically most of them could be solved by long-period crop rotation...say every couple of decades take the fields that had been used for field crops, and move them to orchards, and simultaneously you rotate an orchard back to being
      • Could be worse. Someone could have tossed in a terrible comment like, "I hope they don't build rockets like they build software" - see, his comment wasn't really THAT bad, ey?
      • And most of all, ISRO's yearly grant is barely a blimp in the National Budget; I'd be more concerned about wastage in the Public (food) Distribution Scheme than I would be about spending a few extra zeroes for some worthwhile science.
    • give it up dude! this kind of argument is getting old..
    • The poor will always be with us.

      Have you ever been on the wrong side of the tracks in a US city?

    • It is very easy to point at a problem. It is often very difficult to suggest a solution. Yes, clean drinking water, toilets (mind you, I said toilets, not 'clean' toilets - that'd be the next phase!), electricity, transport, assured employment are the issues that need to be tackled more or less in that order in India. But as it often happens with difficult problems, the solution lies at an altogether different level. A couple of NGOs can probably pool up enough money to ferry water in tankers to some remote

    • That didn't stop the US space program did it? Or did they house all the homeless people first?

  • Private financing? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by dada21 ( 163177 ) *
    I've not spent much time on the issue of space -- I do want to go, and I will pay almost anything to do so in my lifetime.

    My question is -- why do all these innovations come from governments? Are there regulations or requirements that prevent private investment into the new inventions?

    Space tourism will be a huge business. Just from discussing it with customers of mine (who pay $150,000 for a week in Vegas for 2 people, what's $150,000 to hit space?), I bet there are at least 100,000 people in the world w
    • please see Xprize http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-prize [wikipedia.org] and Virgin Galactic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Galactic [wikipedia.org].

    • Re:Private financing? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Yartrebo ( 690383 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @07:18PM (#14486437)
      It is extremely expensive to go into space with conventional rockets beacause it's near the limit of what's physically possible. Had our gravitational well (product of surface gravity and planet diameter) been twice as deep, we'd might as well forget about launching conventional rockets into orbit.

      Spaceship One didn't go into orbit. It had enough oomph to get about 100km of altitude. That's only a few percent of what's needed to get into space, and the cost increases exponentially as the delta-g needed increases, with a doubling constant of about 2km/sec or so, the exact figure depending on the reduction and oxidizing agents used with hydrogen and oxygen giving the largest constant.

      Additionally, for-profit businesses have virtually no incentive to invest in long term research. Their discount rates tend to be around 10% (even in this era of uber-low interest rates) and that's for a sure bet investment. Risky multi-decade investments that might or might have a huge payoff in 30 years are not what they like. Governments and non-profits (like the Mars Society) are the only groups that have the necessary long-term thinking to develop this field, and even then they miss more often than hit. There are plenty space shuttle-type boondoggles for one Sputnik or Soyuz or Apollo victory.

      As far as I know, private space research is either lightly encouraged, or treated neutrally. It's more that few people are so foolhardy to invest in it at this point. Rutan might make money because of publicity and there being a limited tourist potential for sub-orbital flights, but his research is a dead-end that will not bring us any closer to routine orbital space flight.
      • This is true.

        Yet we spend billions (trillions?) on going to war and there are tons of defense contractors licking their chops every day. Doesn't it amaze you that these are the same companies that develop all the weapons to kill one another?

        I'd love to see a day when the populations of the world arm themselves and say no to the elite warmongering imperialists. This is nothing directed solely at Bush, Clinton and every other president, PM and world leader in 60 years has had war ambitions (war is the healt
        • It's not a coincidence that military ambitian and space exploration go hand in hand.

          What message do you think the Soviets got when we hit the Sea of Tranquility with a rocket? "We can hit the moon, we can for damn sure hit Moscow."

        • Okay, just to clarify.

          You're saying that we (the untrained, out of shape, great unwashed)
          should via force of personal arms (i.e. me and my AR-15)
          defianance (to which I assume you mean prevent our tax dollars from being used to finance)
          the defense industry (i.e. the folks that make all of said personal arms, AND the REALLY BIG and wizbang toys our military uses)?

          Umm. So, does anyone else view this as a losing proposition on three fronts?

          1) Even if we get rid of our defense industry, all those other countries

    • Re:Private financing? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by simishag ( 744368 )
      My question is -- why do all these innovations come from governments? Are there regulations or requirements that prevent private investment into the new inventions?

      I'm not an expert by any means, but I'd summarize the reasons as:

      1) Launches should take place somewhat near the equator, and not over populated areas, limiting the number of launch sites. Maybe not a huge concern since the use of already established launch sites could be negotiated.

      2) Private space programs need to be organized in countr

    • Space tourism will be a huge business. Just from discussing it with customers of mine (who pay $150,000 for a week in Vegas for 2 people, what's $150,000 to hit space?), I bet there are at least 100,000 people in the world who would pay $50,000 to travel.

      The catch is that $5B isn't nearly enough to design an orbital space craft and launch it 10k times (10 people per trip).
    • The best you can get right now to send things into space, using Russian rockets, is around $1000 to $1500 per pound. So for $50k, you get to send half to a third of a person one way into space with no accommodations. Not exactly what I'd consider fun.

      The cost and complexity starts to go up as you add re-entry mechanisms, life support and so on. Probably millions per person if not much more, yhe Russians I believe charge 20 million for a week on the ISS. That is not counting the billions probably needed to b

    • Re:Private financing? (Score:3, Informative)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      My question is -- why do all these innovations come from governments?

      Simple. The time discounted value of future, excludable rewards exceeds the cost of doing space exploration. Up to now at least. It follows there is no entrepreneurial incentive to invest in new space technologies without public support.

      Consider the significance of Spaceship One. The chief innovation of this system was financing. Scaled recreated the capabilties of the X-15 from fifty years ago with private money, which is a milestone
    • Space tourism will be a huge business. Just from discussing it with customers of mine (who pay $150,000 for a week in Vegas for 2 people, what's $150,000 to hit space?), I bet there are at least 100,000 people in the world who would pay $50,000 to travel.

      What we need to do is take the money from these people that have so much of it to frivilously throw away and redirect it to more worthy causes like educating our children or feeding the hungry.

    • ... you just havent looked hard enough:

      xcor [xcor.com]

      blue origin [blueorigin.com] (Jeff Bezos, Amazon)

      spaceX [spacex.com]

      Armadillo Aerospace [armadilloaerospace.com] (John Carmack)

      (Not mentioning the obvious: Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites.)

      And don't forget about America's Space Prize [astronautix.com] a $50 million dollar prize for the development of a reusable vehicle to service http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/ [slashdot.org]">Bigelow Aerospace's inflatable space hotel. (Robert Bigelow owns the "Budget Suites of America" hoetl chain). Several contendors for the prize at the mom
  • India: The Future of the Past.
  • Well, we had our boondoggle, now they can build one, too.

    Steve
    • Before the Buran shuttle vehicle, the Russians had a project called Spiral, very similar to the India proposal for a high-Mach carrier aircraft first stage followed by an orbital stage and a small lifting body orbiter.

      But before going down that path, the folks in India should listen to this guy http://www.dunnspace.com/home.html#Columns [dunnspace.com]. Getting into orbit is fundamentally different than flying an aircraft, and this Arthur Schnitt fellow argues that the max performance route used in aircraft is too costl

  • India "planning?" (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ScentCone ( 795499 )
    ...and then, "This is only in its conceptual stage."

    Huh. No offense to India (really!) but, there are high school nerds in New Jersey who are also at this stage of work on their own personal space programs.

    • Re:India "planning?" (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Do they have profitable existing space industries?

      This is a hell of a lot more likely to happen than, say, Chinese moon landings.
    • That was a bit of a let down, yes. Still, every project that gets started goes through that stage at some point. The problems are with those projects that either get stuck there, or that leave it behind them.
    • Blame the spin, not the intent.

      That said, speaking as an Indian, the positive spin over ISRO is nauseating at times; the Indian press, in particular, loves to fawn over those guys for no apparent reason. I suppose every country needs its heroes and positive-news-generators.

      • Blame the spin, not the intent.

        That said, speaking as an Indian, the positive spin over ISRO is nauseating at times; the Indian press, in particular, loves to fawn over those guys for no apparent reason. I suppose every country needs its heroes and positive-news-generators.

        You are right on all counts. I think my comment needs a little more context than I thought it did. My larger point was that reporting on a conceptual-stage idea about a possible plan for a program isn't really news, in that such con
        • (to wit, I own a dog that can almost reach escape veolocty... hmmmm)
          That's funny; out here, it is I who reaches velocities to escape dogs!

          Attempts at levity apart, point taken, but all I can say is, welcome to Slashdot and Rediff! :-D

  • India's Pace of Change (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Malangali ( 932979 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @07:26PM (#14486504)
    I've been to India a few times over the past 22 years, and I am absolutely amazed at the changes that have been taking place there. India continues to have millions upon millions of people living in dire poverty, but the country is taking aggressive steps to address its problems. Meanwhile, the infrastructure is improving by leaps and bounds. For example, no matter where I've gone in India I've been able to find local calling centers where I can make calls throughout the country for reasonable prices - and a functioning telecom system is vital for participation in the global economy.

    Sure, India has a long way to go. But the country has some of the world's best scientists and has become a significant center for global technological innovation. Why shouldn't they put their skills to work in space?

    Of course, it all may be about ego, about promoting national pride. Americans, though, are hardly in a position to judge others about that. After all, our entire space program was built on beating the Soviets to the moon!

    • Sure, India has a long way to go. But the country has some of the world's best scientists and has become a significant center for global technological innovation. Why shouldn't they put their skills to work in space?

      India has the potential to become one of the world's next great economic powers, if they play their cards right. They have two huge things going for them: firstly, they've got a massive workforce with a strong work ethic (unlike most western countries), and secondly, they have a leadership who

  • making money, right? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by putko ( 753330 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @07:30PM (#14486541) Homepage Journal
    Indians will use this to make money, right? This isn't some ego-building thing like the Chinese space program, right?

    I think that's really neat. I can imagine the Chinese govt. has something to prove. I can also imagine the Indians are too poor (and not despotic enough) to irresponsibly waste the money. In China, even if it is a waste, if the big men say do it, you do it.

    My only thought is that the inherent dishonesty of Indian organizations will lead to the rockets not working and lots of fingerpointing and ass-covering. And no real accountability.

    • Indians will use this to make money, right? This isn't some ego-building thing like the Chinese space program, right?

      It's more than likely a bit of that, combined with good, old fashioned geopolitical paranoia. India has been leery of the the People's Republic of China (PRC) ever since that little war [wikipedia.org] the two of them had, and that India lost.

      And, there's also the issue of the PRC's counter-balancing of Indian's growing power in the region through military support to Pakistan and Burma. And the support

    • Stop the China bashing, mate. Space program is an ego-building exercise for the Chinese government, so as the US, Russian, EU and the Indian. Space program burns money. Everyone tries hard to arouse commerical interest once after the show case stage. But, satellite launching is a pretty politcally sensitive business. Don't you find it unusual that China actually seldom launch commerical satellite for foreign countries in recently, while they were much more active about 10 years ago? Don't tell me their
    • We're the first country to use satellite technology to improve our agricultural standards. The INSAT series of satellites spawned an entire telecom revolution; we're one of the fastest growing markets for television and mobiles. We also had, what was until sometime back, the most powerful spy satellite in the world; apart from presumably using it for security, I know for a fact that they're used in urban planning.

      I'd love to hear more about this inherent "dishonesty" of Indian organisations and how they le

  • The second stage after delivering the payload in the orbit will be made to re-enter the atmosphere and will be recovered using airbags either in the sea or land, he said adding, "This is only in its conceptual stage."

    Reminds of that recovery mission by the nasa (the one before this weekend) where it ended up halfway to china.

    India rocket science. Oh yeah there is an image that doesn't have a tiny bit of a mismatch. Offcourse by now they probably turning out more rocket scientist then the rest of the worl

    • India rocket science. Oh yeah there is an image that doesn't have a tiny bit of a mismatch. Offcourse by now they probably turning out more rocket scientist then the rest of the world but I was raised by "It ain't half hot mum" and old prejudices die hard.

      The impression I have is that Indian culture places a great premium on education and intellectual achievement. I'm certainly not surprised they can build rockets and develop a space programme.

      Meanwhile American culture places a great premium on beauty

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Sure, air breathing engines can go fast. But not nearly fast enough. And then there's the ole square law. I'm more worried about rocket structural integrity. Tanks see very different stresses horizontal vs vertical. Even prestressed.

  • ISRO is India's NASA. Every time NASA has said they'll lower launch costs with some development project they have actually raised them.

    The only thing that will lower launch costs, other than the threat of loss of something like the cold war is incentives for private enterprise [geocities.com].

  • That sounds the same as other countries with much higher labor costs. What are they paying these ISRO employees? Enough for a house?

    If it's a NASA article, the cost is mainly from retaining the permanent staff between launches. If it's an ISRO article, the only explanation besides Indians being independantly wealthy is the hardware costing 10 times more.

  • Bah, India always comes out with these hare-brained ideas that it never delivers on. There was that Avatar scram-craft, and all the other ideas that have sprung forth from ISRO, DRDO, etc. Talking the talk is a lot different than walking the walk.

    The only thing I can see that might have prompted this announcement, is due to India's successful testing of a scramjet on the ground -- in a wind tunnel. The US had done that nearly a half-century ago.

    One scramjet windtunnel test, and already people are conjuring

  • I'm planning to have Catherine Zeta Jones... (Score:5, Funny)

    by melted ( 227442 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @08:55PM (#14487114) Homepage
    I'm planning to have Catherine Zeta Jones as my wife. The project is in a conceptual stage right now, but I'm planning real hard. If only I could get some private funding to make myself fiscally attractive, I'd be all set.
  • Airbags work great on Mars (population 0, size 2/3 earth size), but would a 60 ton bouncing spacecraft work in India? (population ~1,000,000,000, size 1/50 earth)
  • Before jumping into space, I'd concentrate on the whole, you know, like... third world deal - poverty, starvation, destitution, banditism, diseases that doesn't exist elsewhere anymore, steam engines, mud huts...

    What's next? Rhodesia (*cough* Zimbabwe) building a Mars colony?

    • It's a country of a billion people, more than three times the size of the USA's three hundred million. India is sensibly using the expertese they have to do all of the above and much, much more.

      Investment in a space program now will give them long term dividends, both now and into the future. As just one example now weather and resources satellites give them a big per capita payoff. Other posts here list more.

      ---

      Are you a creator or a consumer?

    • Now then, Slashdot being a tech news site and all that, you'd naturally expect only tech news related to India. For policy discussions on economics or poverty, you'd want to go an economics blog site, or a South Asian news portal; other parts of the site linked here, Rediff.com, have lots of material on that. You could also go to Indian Express [indianexpress.com], which often has very informed commentary on what you call as third-world issues.

      Wait, you didn't think making satellites was all that we were doing, did you?

      • I sense you're trying to imply that my honest opinion on this "tech matter" is somehow off topic and inappropriate in this forum.
        • I'm saying you seem to be assuming that India's science happens at the expense of other more pressing needs. I happen to think that's not the case; because, we discuss science and science-policy out here on Slashdot to the preclusion of, say, discussing India's bad infant mortality rates, international observers might get that impression.

  • To bring back these launch vehicles safely to earth, we have refine the science of aerodynamics and special materials," he said."
    ...
    For orbital missions, as the vehicle needs to deliver Mach number of the order of 25 (25 times the speed of sound), it becomes mandatory that rocket-based systems have to be combined with air breathing systems leading to what is termed as Rocket Based Combined Cycle System, for meeting the total orbital velocity requirement.

    This attitude is exactly what makes NASA stuff so ex

  • using a rope trick and a really long cable to build a space elevator...

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